The dipping sun behind those skinny trees,
the trees I came through just now, when I found
the hill all gone in shadow, just the one
last copper shoulder where the ridge swings round;
I ran like crazy into this plot of sun
and fell upon my knees
in wintry tussocks, streaks of green and buff.
And that's it gone, but still the grass is dry
in this unwonted, warmed-up February,
though evening dew, night frost, come soon enough.
“All the live murmur of a summer's day”...
Indeed, one bumblebee sailed in and out
of the hedgerow's tracery; no leaves as yet,
nor flowers, except near the Meads roundabout
the purple lines of crocus loosely set
along Great Western Way
bathe in false summer, Mediterranean spring...
the lemon mahonia in business parks,
the thin-twigged winter cherry that always marks
warm hours with a rosier smattering.
The strollers and their dogs are on the hill,
where three weeks past, on snow, toboggans ran;
the girls now pushing pushchairs, and the boys
flitting in furtive bands, from which you can
smell weed emitting, low laughter and noise.
Everyone's here to chill,
in the last rays of a half-term afternoon;
the swings and slides full of the children's cries
and yellow alder catkins and spilled fries
on walkways, which the lights will shine on soon.
And on the tarmac autumn leaves lie flattened
by many feet, so crushed the grit shows through;
these leaves becoming spectral, mere remains
of form and fibre; though their shapes stay true
no urgency of sap burns in their veins --
and yet this faded, patterned
carpet makes the shade of homeward glow,
so tranquil and so open is this dark.
And still, threading Shaw Ridge to Lydiard Park,
comes many a runner from the homes below,
like martins skimming past you in a lane,
just podcasts on the air, you watch them go
on swoosh heels making distance in a blink,
acting a dream of flight from life so slow
its thoughts themselves hardly aspire to think
in any fresher strain
but bear the family and pay the bills --
while these consume and fling aside the maps,
break through the ring-roads and by dawn perhaps
stand free and shivering on the Cumnor hills?
No, runners, for they call you to your homes!
Panting on footways through the winter trees
above the pipework laid by Wales and West,
where gas from Russian tundra, Nordic seas,
flows into regulated banks, expressed
in soft erupting flames,
hot water coming on reliably --
let's go, before the dusk raises a wind on
the gloomy terraces of Even Swindon,
we can still dive in the shower before tea.
[A poem begun in Swindon in February 2019, finally completed a couple of months ago.]
